Monthly Archives: November 2019

Hey, it's the Ambassadors of Harmony! I haven't run one of their videos here in a long time. As I understand it, each year a highlight of the Barbershop Harmony Society's International Convention is when these guys put on one of their elaborate presentations. This is the one from the 2019 gathering a few months ago and to do it, these folks all had to paint themselves sepia…

What is it with delicatessens closing? The two biggies in New York — The Stage and Carnegie — have both closed in recent years. Yes, there are other unhealthy places to eat in New York including eighty-seven million pizza places and delicatessens like Katz's and The Second Avenue Deli but something sacrilegious occurred when those two famous delis, which not so long before always had lines out the door, shuttered. (For some odd reason, I like that the Second Avenue Deli has two locations and neither one is on Second Avenue.)

And now it's happening in the other city which almost prides itself on having restaurants that contribute to the cardiac problem…Las Vegas. Not so long ago, they had a Stage Deli at Caesars, a Carnegie Deli at The Mirage (which is closing shortly) and two outlets of the great Los Angeles shrine to corned beef and latkes, Canter's. There was a Canters in the Tivoli Village food court and it closed in July of '18. There was also one in the promenade at the Linq and it went away this past February. (The Canter's in L.A. is still open but it recently cut back its 24-hour table service to just Friday and Saturday nights.)

I could understand these closures occurred in an America that was on an "eat healthy" kick but as darn near every TV commercial for fast food proves, that ain't the case. I'm waiting for Little Caesar's to announce a new pizza that is all cheese with no vegetables and it comes in a box made completely out of bacon. Last week here in L.A., a woman in a Mercedes-Benz did serious damage to her car trying to cut in line to get a Popeye's Fried Chicken Sandwich.

I'm going to try to answer my own question: I think one thing that has harmed the deli business is that sandwiches got too big. When someone says, "Wanna go to the deli for lunch?", the mind goes to something that looks like the photo above — too big to finish (and priced accordingly) and even too big to fit into your mouth.  Even if I order a half-sandwich at Canter's, I have to deal with 50% of the above.  It's the wrong ratio of bread-to-meat, it's going to fall apart when I pick it up and I cannot dress it with mustard in a way that will give me the proper amount of mustard while biting into the lower two-thirds.

I also can't finish the whole thing but I have to pay for the whole thing.  If I get one of those "to go" and take it home, I grab some of my own bread, redistribute the meat and turn it into three easier-to-eat sandwiches.  But if I dine in, it's not a sandwich.  It's an overpriced problem.

Some delis have multiple sizes of sandwiches and it's possible to get one that doesn't look like it has a glandular condition.  The ones where I've seen that on the menu all seem to have them priced to discourage you from ordering the smaller one so it feels overpriced.  So the size of the portions and the price scare people off…

…I think.  Anyway, that's my guess as to why delicatessens aren't as popular as they once were.  You got a better one?

More people have written me about comic books based on Broadway plays…and actually, except for Warp, I think what we're talking about is comic books based on movies that were based on Broadway plays. A number of folks mentioned Annie to me…another one of which I didn't think. In this case, we have a comic book based on a movie based on a stage musical based on a comic strip.

When the movie based on the Broadway musical was coming out in 1982, Marvel got the rights and had writer Tom DeFalco and artists Winslow Mortimer and Vince Colletta whip up an adaptation in comic book form and then they printed it in three formats: As a tabloid-sized comic and as two issues of a regular-sized comic.

I've received a number of other examples of comic books based on movies based on non-musical plays like No Time for Sergeants but I think we've taken this topic as far as it's worth. Thanks to all who sent in suggestions.

Sorry I skipped a couple of days here. Every so often, I need some Trump-free time in my life.

Today's Bad News for Donald Trump
There are a number to pick from but I'm going to go with the one that brings the headline: "Court Fines Trump $2 Million for Diverting Money From Veterans Fundraiser to His Campaign." Remember when stealing from Veterans was a bad thing?

Today's Outrage by Donald Trump
Apparently, we're leaving the phase where Trump describes his quid pro quo arrangements as "a perfect call" and insisting that if you "read the transcript" (the one which says right on it that it isn't a transcript), you'll see clearly that no crime was committed. The new phase is that, yes, there may have been a crime but Trump is innocent and the ones to blame are U.S. Ambassador Gordon Sondland, Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and maybe even the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney. Trump is already claiming that he barely knew Sondland.

An Article of Interest
Derek Thompson reports — surprise, surprise! — that the big G.O.P. tax cuts for wealthy folks that were supposed to grow the economy for all failed to do this. As they do every time it's tried…

Donald Trump's signature legislative achievement was the corporate-tax cut he signed in 2017. Republicans said it would grow the economy by up to 6 percent, stimulate business investment, and pay for itself. None of those promises have come to pass. GDP growth has declined to less than 2 percent according to the latest report, released yesterday. Business investment has now declined for two straight quarters, dragging down economic growth. And the federal deficit exceeds $1 trillion.

There's some good news about the economy in there too but when Trump brags how great he's been for business investment, someone oughta throw those numbers in his face.

I have known Craig Miller since — literally — the President of the United States was Lyndon B. Johnson. You may have heard or read of the Los Angeles Comic Book Club, of which I was President back in the sixties. Craig was a founding member of that club. In fact, some said he was the founding member but I learned never to get into that dispute because it could lead to fisticuffs.

More interesting is that Craig, among his many other positions, was the original Director of Fan Relations at Lucasfilm when they made Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and other stellar productions. Nowadays, every movie or TV show that has any sort of "fantastic" element to it employs or contracts with experts to promote said film or TV show in the fan press and at conventions. Craig was one of the first of such experts and as such, probably responsible for some arguable fraction of Star Wars becoming such a phenomenon.

He has just released a book called Star Wars Memories: My Time In The (Death Star) Trenches and in it, he writes of those years of his life. There are a lot of books about Star Wars behind-the-scenes but this is the only one written from Craig's unique perspective and position. I read it in galleys and was impressed enough to tell him that when it came out, I would highly recommend it to readers of this blog. Well, it's out and it's real good and if you want to see for yourself how good, you'll order a copy, preferably from my link. Go for it.

• It must really suck to be an unemployed actor these days and to hear that James Dean is getting more work than you are.

Here's an oddity. In 1929, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy made a short called Double Whoopee. It was one of their last silent films and it is most notable for a brief scene with a then-largely-unknown Jean Harlow. She played a woman who gets much of her dress ripped off…a star-making part if ever there was one back then. A lot of people think this is one of several shorts that Stan and Ollie made when transitioning to sound — films issued in both sound and silent versions because many theaters in this country were not yet equipped to play "talkies."

The confusion is because there was a sound version of Double Whoopee. It just wasn't made in 1929 and doesn't feature the voices of the on-screen actors. In the late sixties as a pilot film for a projected series, a group of Laurel and Hardy fans dubbed the film with voices, music and sound effects. The main voices were done by Chuck McCann. They only did one film this way and I'm not at all sure how I feel about it…

People are always writing to ask me my opinion of the latest blockbuster movie release. I'll save you the trouble: I probably haven't seen it and might not for some time. Sometimes, that's because nothing I know about the film attracts me to it. Sometimes, I'm just busy and going to see a movie is one of the few things I can postpone for a long time and then experience.

This wasn't true when I was much younger. A film made the rounds and then it disappeared. It might later turn up on TV, trimmed and censored and interrupted by commercials and reduced to the small screens we had in those days. That was bad enough…but it might also become highly unavailable. I remember when my friend Rob Solomon and I went to see the original version of The Producers with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder. We loved it so much that we sat through it twice because we were afraid it would go away and we'd never be able to see it again. Today, I have a copy of it on DVD and somewhere in my storage space, I think I have it on Beta, on VHS and on Laserdisc.

In 1967, that simply did not seem possible. But in 2019, I'm not sure I can think of one movie I ever liked that I could not be watching in the time it would take me to find the DVD and jam it into one of my players. Most of them, I could also locate and begin playing via some "on demand" service without even budging from the chair I'm in right now. That will certainly always be true of any current movies. No, I haven't seen Joker yet. But one of these days when I have time, I will. And it will be the exact same movie I could go today and see at the Cineplex.

That is not true of a play I might want to see that's playing now or a concert or a lecture or a stand-up comedy act. It's not even true of a lot of TV shows. The ones I record automatically on my DVR are mostly like those of Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Bill Maher…shows that are timely and disposable. I might not be able to see those particular episodes six months from now and/or they might not have the same meaning to me then. But I'll bet you I'll always be able to watch the latest episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and the experience will be the same as if I watched it tonight.

My life changed a lot when I got my first VCR in late 1976. From that point on, I controlled television, it did not control me. I didn't have to be home and in front of my TV set at 11:30 to watch Johnny Carson. I could start watching it at ten minutes past midnight or the next day or weeks later. Once I got my first TiVo in 1999, it was easier. Today, it's even easier because we have shows On Demand or shows that rerun several times during the week. That's great. I'd like to see The Irishman but I'll do that when I'm good 'n' ready.

I have friends who don't think that way. They want to see the new movie everyone's talking about so they can talk about it and feel they're very "today." That's fine. I just wish they'd stop doing what someone did to me yesterday and it prompted me to write this. I ran into a buddy the other day and…

BUDDY: I want to get your take on Gemini Man. I didn't think it was as bad as some people are saying. What did you think?

ME: I think I didn't see it. What made you think I had?

BUDDY: Well, it's been open for like three weeks now. I guess you're waiting for it to hit Netflix, huh?

ME: I'm waiting until I feel like seeing it and have time to see it. It might be years until I get around to it if I get around to it. It might be a period piece set in the past by then. Don't you ever watch a movie that came out a year or three ago?

BUDDY: No…because then they're old movies.

In my earlier post on comic books based on Broadway plays, I said others might write in with examples which hadn't occurred to me.  So far, nine of you have written to remind me that in 1987, DC issued an adaptation of the then-forthcoming movie version of the musical, Little Shop of Horrors.  That's not really an example because the stage version was (then) only an off-Broadway show.  Little Shop didn't play on Broadway until a production in 2003.

Still, it's close…and I should have remembered it because I was (I believe) the first writer assigned to do the adaptation.  Legendary DC editor Julius Schwartz called me up one day and offered me the job, I accepted and then, a day or three later, he called me back and apologized profusely.  He'd jumped the gun, he said, and someone at the company was forcing him to use another writer.  No, I was not angry.  This kind of thing has happened so often that I've learned to expect it occasionally and to just shrug.  It's healthier.

I also should have remembered that I did adapt a movie based on a Broadway musical for DC Comics.  Dan Spiegle and I worked on an adaptation of The Wiz but it was halted in the midst of the drawing stage and never published.  I wrote about it here.

And since we're mentioning the off-Broadway Little Shop, let's mention Starstruck.  John M. Vohlidka wrote to remind me that Elaine Lee wrote and starred in that play and that artist Mike Kaluta did design work for it.  It ran off-Broadway in 1980 and again in '83.  Lee and Kaluta turned it into comic book format for Comix International and Heavy Metal and later for series and graphic novels at Marvel, Comico, Dark Horse Comics and other publishers.

Okay, what else did I miss?

Micki St. James has today's question…

Just occurred to me so I thought I'd ask — has there ever been a good comic based on a Broadway show? There have been great comics based on movies of course (Sword in the Stone) and TV shows (Zorro) but I don't remember any My Fair Lady or Damn Yankees comic book.

I can think of Broadway shows based on comic books but no comic books based on Broadway shows unless you count these two…

In 1973, Charlton put out a comic book based on the movie of the Broadway show 1776. I wrote about it here. It was adapted by writer Joe Gill and drawn by Tony Tallarico.

Before that — in 1963 — Dell put out an adaptation of the movie based on the Broadway show The Music Man. As with the adaptation of 1776, it's rather odd to see the story told without the songs and it doesn't fare well. I don't know how anyone could fall in love with Professor Harold Hill if you didn't see him sing and dance…and what's The Music Man without a rousing performance of "The Shipoopi?"

Just who wrote the comic is unknown and for a long time, the identity of the artist was a maddening blank to those of us who obsess over such mysteries. Then a year or three ago, comic book scholar Martin O'Hearn figured it out and we all sighed, "Of course!" The rest of us can perhaps be forgiven because John Forte usually inked his own pencil art and here, someone else did the honors. We aren't sure who that "someone else" is.

John Forte (pronounced "fort") was a prolific comic book artist who "broke in" around 1945 working for, as so many beginners did then, the Iger shop. By 1950, he was working for almost every publisher in town but mainly for Quality Comics — on Blackhawk, among other features. When Quality shut down, he worked primarily for Atlas (aka Marvel) on just about all their non-funny funnybooks and then mainly for ACG. ACG was kind of a "farm team" for DC Comics and while working for them, he began getting jobs from DC, working for them until his death in 1966. He was then primarily drawing Jimmy Olsen for DC and when he passed, he was replaced by another ACG mainstay, Pete Costanza.

At DC, he inked a lot of stories penciled by Curt Swan and did well-remembered stints as penciler-inker of two features in particular. He was the artist on "Tales of the Bizarro World" in Adventure Comics and some have suggested he was the ideal artist to draw an imperfect version of Superman because he was an imperfect version of Curt Swan. When the Bizarros left Adventure Comics, their spot in the book was taken up by "Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes" drawn by…John Forte. It was the first regular feature of The Legion and Mr. Forte designed a lot of the characters who formed that team. Reportedly, he struggled to draw those stories every month with their crowded panels but still somehow found time to draw the Music Man comic and a couple of others for Dell.

Someone else may come up with a comic book based on a Broadway show but…oh, wait! In 1971, there was a science-fiction play called Warp! from the Organic Theatre Company of Chicago. It was actually a trilogy and it ran there for a year before a brief, unsuccessful move to Broadway in 1973, closing after seven previews and eight performances. Ten years later, First Comics — which was based in Evanston, Illinois near Chicago — published a Warp! comic book based on the play. Does that count? Maybe someone else will come up with one that doesn't occur to me right now.

I have, like just about everyone, become an enormous fan of Simone Biles. Here she is when she was even shorter than she is now…

Today's Bad News for Donald Trump
…and there's plenty of it, starting with Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the EU, flipping his previous testimony to say that, by golly, he suddenly remembers that there was a clear quid pro quo in the Ukraine deal. It's getting harder and harder for Trump and his supporters to deny, though they'll find a way. You also have reporters and others diving into the newly-released testimony in the impeachment probe and to top it all off…election results! Trump campaigned hard for Matt Bevin, the Repub governor of Kentucky and even beseeched the crowd, "You can't let it [Bevin's defeat] happen to me!" They did and meanwhile, Democrats now control both the House and Senate in Virginia.

Today's Outrage by Donald Trump
We don't know for sure Trump's behind it but an awful lot of Republicans are suddenly demanding that everyone ignore a certain law.  It's the one that protects the anonymity of whistleblowers like the one who blew the whistle on The Great Ukrainian Quid Pro Quo.  You know…that unfair law written by Republicans and passed with Republican votes.  They don't like their own handiwork when the whistle that's blown is blown for thee…

• When I walk into an Apple Store and I have last year's iPhone, I feel positively Amish.

Folks keep asking me which Democrat I'd support for President if the primary election were held today. Since it's unlikely it will be, it doesn't matter. They're all better than what we have now and my opinions about the individual candidates are likely to change a lot in the 119 days until California goes to the polls. Would anyone like to bet that at least one or two of them won't say or do something in that time that will alter our views of them?

I'm not even sure to what extent I should vote for the candidate who I think would make the best President as opposed to the one who stands the best chance of becoming President. Those will probably not be the same person and the "electability" factor can change on a moment's notice. (At this point in the last election, the Republican leading the pack was Ben Carson.)

Bernie could have another heart episode. Joe, who's only two years younger, could have some medical problems that will raise concerns about his age. I really like Joe Biden but he does have the capacity to occasionally say something really clumsy and awkward…and he will. It'll be no worse than a half-dozen things Trump says every day and we'll have to watch as his mental health is questioned by folks who pretend Donald makes sense. But make no mistake: He will.

I know, I know. We all want this election to be over with. Democrats are eager to throw Trump out of office before he does more Trump-like deeds. Republican are eager to get him re-elected before more scandals erupt. But we're stuck with a calendar that says we have another year of this. Even by March 3 when my state votes, there will be all-different issues and all-different reasons to support this candidate over that candidate. And I can't help but think that by November, there could be some other candidates.

In the meantime, go read Kevin Drum's comments about Elizabeth Warren's proposal for Universal Health Care. He's right. We can pass laws that will make health insurance in this country cheaper and more available but we can't pass what Ms. Warren is proposing, at least not in one fell swoop. It may take a lot of little swoops over a lot of years.

Hey, remember this video?  It was a report on a poll about the worst Halloween candies and I said I didn't know who'd conducted the poll and who the guy was in the video.  A reader of this site, Jeff Peterson, tells me the survey was done by candystore.com (and it's right there on the video) and the newsman in the report is Steve Atkinson from 10News in San Diego. Thanks, Jeff.

Last evening, Buzzr ran the second of five episodes of The Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour with the great Stan Freberg as a celebrity panelist. The third should be on tonight and so forth.

Also: I noted in this post that Wikipedia says there were 191 episodes of the series, which is a strange number for a five-a-week program. I got a lot of e-mailed theories and the most likely seems to be that the show was pre-empted four times, meaning that they sometimes didn't do five a week. Several folks told me they skipped Thanksgiving, January 2 for College Bowl games, and two days in July for Wimbledon coverage.

Sunday evening, my fave musical group Big Daddy put on their usual great show out in Santa Monica. A bonus of the evening was that I met Daniel Faigin, who reads this blog and has his own blog, Observations Along the Road, at this address. The topics he covers are highways, Judaism, history, off-beat news and the one that interests me the most, which is live theater mainly in the Southern California area. I've been reading some of his reviews of shows we both saw and he's a good, perceptive observer.

And speaking of live theater around here: In the past, I posted some raves for productions staged at the Cupcake Theater, an underfunded storefront operation out in North Hollywood. It's run by an energetic gent named Michael Pettenato, who's real good at producing musicals without a lot of money or stage space. Last April, Cupcake lost its location out on Magnolia Boulevard so we've been without their fine stagings…but it's just been announced that they found a new place to live. Sometime in January, they reopen out near Melrose and Vermont in what I guess would be called East Hollywood. No word yet on exactly when or what they'll be performing there so I'll let you know as soon as I hear.